Problem:

It is sometimes useful to numerically model situations in which there are two fluids of varying density in the same numerical model. An example of this is modeling saltwater intrusion adjacent to an ocean or modeling the movement of salt saturated solution beneath tailings piles in the potash industry. In either of these situations the density of the fluid is controlled by the concentration of salt in the fluid. As there is a higher concentration, the density of the pore-water increases and there is a resulting downward gradient for this dense pore-water.

Solution:

A coupled SVFlux / ChemFlux model includes the buoyant force influence on the seepage transport due to the change in solution concentration of contaminant transport. Using the new ability of density-dependent flow can improve the accurate simulation of heavy salt water. The new feature has been implemented in 1D, 2D, and 3D models and is enabled to work with the Professional version of SVOffice™ 2009.

Additional Articles

• Density Dependent Water Flow and Contaminant Transport

This model demonstrates the Coupling of SVFlux and ChemFlux as well as Density-Dependant Flow with the Elder problem.

Model filename: SoluteTransport > ElderModel_10y.svm